


Tinhatting, Queerbaiting, Representation, and "Fetishization"

by Franzeska



Series: March Meta Matters [1]
Category: Fandom - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:01:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 6,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23283694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Franzeska/pseuds/Franzeska
Summary: Another collection of tumblr posts on the fujocourse
Series: March Meta Matters [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664836
Kudos: 6





	1. The Real Problem with Tinhatting

**Author's Note:**

> Uploaded for day 23 of the March Meta Matters Challenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: February 6, 2017.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/156907125844/the-real-problem-with-tinhatting

I remember when the Domlijah tinhat websites full of “evidence” first appeared. I wasn’t very familiar with RPF fandoms or with tinhatting, and I thought: “Wow, that evidence _does_ look kind of suspicious.” It was only years later, when I saw the exact same “evidence” in every other tinhat fandom and realized that it will always look the same. Yes, Larry too. Yes, Johnlock too. Yes, J2… err… too.

But you know what? If you’re having fun, who cares?

The actual problem with tinhatting isn’t that you’re wrong or that it’s silly to think that actors are sending secret messages with their shirt colors. The _actual_ problem is that tinhats end up disappointed, frustrated, furious, _crushed_.

Some groups, like TJLC, are known for treating other fans horribly or for harassing the people who make the media they like. That’s awful. Stop that.

But even when tinhats are perfectly nice, they’re still setting themselves up for heartbreak when the canon or the celebrities’ real lives fail to live up to the fantasy. Eventually, no matter how awesome your canon and the people who make it are, they will let you down.

Don’t invest so much of your soul in being proven right that you can’t handle being proven wrong.

  * Tagged: [fandom meta](https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/tagged/fandom-meta) [fandom history](https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/tagged/fandom-history) [ships getting sunk is sad](https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/tagged/ships-getting-sunk-is-sad) [but it's not humiliating unless you were on an ego trip about your ship beforehand](https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/tagged/but-it%27s-not-humiliating-unless-you-were-on-an-ego-trip-about-your-ship-beforehand) [fandom should be fun](https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/tagged/fandom-should-be-fun) [where's the fun in being prostrate with grief?](https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/tagged/where%27s-the-fun-in-being-prostrate-with-grief%3F)




	2. But mine is really canon for real

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: February 10, 2017.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/157071025439/but-mine-is-really-canon-for-real

Oh man… I’ve been reading “Sherlock is queerbaiting!” posts, and they are so damn tragic. Yeah, there’s plenty of unfortunate gay humor in the show, but the “evidence” resembles the evidence from every other time people are 100% convinced their ship is canon despite TPTB telling them explicitly that it won’t be.

I feel bad for the fans because this is a pattern I’ve seen a million times, but it seems like it’s a lot of people’s first fandom or first mainstream TV fandom, and they got their hopes up for no reason. It’s not that I disagree about the “evidence”: it’s that other shows have had this kind of evidence and it never amounted to anything before either.

Meanwhile, there’s plenty of media out there that’s interested in going for a gay relationship front and center. Most of it’s way less popular, and even a small bump in audience would make a huge difference. I wish fandom could take all that futile rage and energy and pour it into supporting queer media, but I know it’s never going to happen.


	3. Writing fanfic has no barrier to entry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: February 12, 2017.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/157166143249/uniwolfwerecorn-hansbekhart-reblogged-your

> Finally, let me just add, for good measure: I think you’re right in one point, and that is that we might want to stop pretending that fandom is all about progressiveness, when progressiveness is mostly accidental, and yes, we can absolutely point out that fandom content reflects the preferences of those who contribute to it. If that’s mostly white women, the content will reflect that, as we’ve basically agreed above. 
> 
> On the other hand, if everyone keeps making the kind of content that _they_ want to see, instead of bemoaning that others don’t make it for them, fandom will continue to change.
> 
> Just don’t expect fans to go to great length to make fandom a better place for others if that’s not what they signed up for. 

This is so well put.

I _am_ concerned with the professional media landscape. I’m working on a short film about slash fans right now, and I’ve written the lead as a black woman because I’d like to make an explicit, public statement about what “a fan” looks like to any film festivals I’m lucky enough to get this film into. This is a response to Clay Liford’s film Slash, which I found offensive on the subject of women, though it’s a pretty good bicurious teenage male coming of age film.

When it comes to my professional career, I have very specific political goals. I _do_ feel a responsibility to break in and to then give other minorities a hand up after me. Fixing Hollywood or anybody’s media industry is a long process: part of it is writing more diverse scripts, but a huge part of it is simply giving minorities a foot in the door on some current undiverse crap so that they can build a track record and maneuver themselves into positions where they have significant creative influence in the future.

Writing fanfic, however, has no barrier to entry. I don’t need to help anyone get their foot in the door, except maybe by pointing them to AO3′s invite request page. We are not being paid for our fandom work. No one has a right to our free labor.

People should ship whatever the hell they want. It’s usually going to be the characters they find hottest. And, _yes_ , perceptions of hotness are absolutely a product of racist societies, but looking at the end product and complaining about a specific person’s sexual tastes is both ineffective and gross. All the more so because fandom currently likes to conflate race and gender in these arguments. When we’re talking about casting a TV show, both should be discussed as part of a balanced, diverse media landscape. When we’re talking about people’s personal masturbation material, they are completely different things.

If we want to change what kind of juggernaut ships fandom creates, we first need to change the media landscape fandom exists in. This doesn’t mean creating more flawless cinnamon roll characters of color: it means making the tortured woobie like Bucky or Dean or whomever a person of color. It means making the asshole douchebag who gets to ignore everyone else’s feelings and yet constantly be validated by the narrative (Sherlock, House, every “genius” character ever) a person of color. It means making the supportive free therapist best friend white instead of a POC. Before Bones jumped an entire ocean of sharks, it was the gender version of this, more or less. I can think of very few examples involving POC. Yes, that is something I would like to change in my future professional career, but I don’t think fic should be expected to lead the way in either sense: I don’t think it’s appropriate to hold fic to that standard, and I don’t think it’s realistic to assume it can or will meet that standard.

I agree that fandom need not be political action. But if someone does want to make it that for themselves, there is an obvious place to start: _Make stuff_. And yet what I see happening on Tumblr is that people love “raising awareness”, but they don’t like putting in the effort to write fic or create original content, even recs. I have lots of ~diverse~ ships, and whenever I’ve had a period of being very active in one of them–reading and commenting on all the fic, checking the tags regularly, etc.–the people I see producing new fanworks and trying to get new fans into their ship, fandom, or character are different people from the “activists” who are supposedly raising awareness. Even the people I see leaving nice comments on fic are different from those “activists”. In fact, the louder someone yells, the more likely it is that their AO3 account is either empty or a sea of juggernaut white m/m ships.

“Raising awareness” in this way is _not effective political action._ It is not progressive. It is not admirable. It’s just a neutral waste of time because it doesn’t lead to change… Unless you’re bullying people, in which case it’s actively negative, spreading misery in the world and chasing people away from your fandom or your ships.

I defend the right of people to spend all their time on Kylux or any other “problematic” ship. It has nothing to do with shipping Kylux myself. (Why would I ship Domhnall Gleeson’s least attractive character when Ex Machina is _right there?_ ) I don’t want you to ship Kylux: I want you to ship Stormpilot. I want you to like my fic. I want you to write fic for me to read. I want you to rec Stormpilot, vid it, draw it. But I want you to do this because you like Finn and Poe and their chemistry, not because you feel guilty.

Didactic fiction is fucking boring. Spending your free time anxiously obsessing over whether your relaxation habits are problematic is a surefire way to burn out and make yourself useless at whatever _real_ political action you take in the rest of your life.

I’m with you: fanworks are _hedonistic_ first and foremost, and that’s just fine.


	4. Tumblr is not actually that indie and special in its taste

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted July 9, 2017.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/162811796540/thefandompolice-advice-every-time-some-rando

[thefandompolice](https://thefandompolice.tumblr.com/post/162288233907/advice-every-time-some-rando-pops-up-on-tumblr):

> Advice: every time some rando pops up on Tumblr yelling at a creator saying only “mlm can write mlm” and you need to represent _them_ personally ask them how their novel is coming along.

The thing that makes me the saddest about all this is that while a few things like Homestuck or WTNV have massive fandoms, Tumblr is not actually that indie and special in its taste. Most of us like mainstream media because mainstream media is what we’ve heard of due to its large advertising budgets and high production values.

Fandom especially tends to love TV shows. TV shows have writers rooms. With a staff of several people. You’re lucky to find one that’s not all straight white men. You’re lucky to find one that has some queer men, white or otherwise. Even on a gay show, you’re not going to find a 100% mlm writing room, and even if you did, and even if the showrunner was also a mlm, some number of the producers, directors, and editors wouldn’t be (and all of these people are essentially writers of television at some point or another).

So anybody who truly thinks that only mlm can write mlm is advocating for there never been any gay dudes on TV ever again except maybe as a guest star who shows up for one episode.

Of course, we all know that these arguments really boil down to bitterness that somebody else’s fic is more popular or somebody else’s ebook romance novel career is taking off more. (And, actually, I sympathize because I do try to buy from male authors and give them a fair chance, especially if they are publicly feminist and talk about misogyny in the m/m romance community, but I usually don’t enjoy their books as much as those of female authors, and that has an economic effect over time given the demographics purchasing m/m romance novels.) But when you really look at the logic of people only writing their same identity, the implications become very unfortunate very quickly once you leave the realm of novels. This standard is a nightmare in more collaborative artforms with larger artistic teams.

I wish tumblr understood more about how various media get made.

  * Tagged: [media](https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/tagged/media) [meta](https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/tagged/meta) [I wish tumblr understood more about ANYTHING](https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/tagged/I-wish-tumblr-understood-more-about-ANYTHING)




	5. Why statistics are a canary in a coal mine, but nothing more

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: April 11, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/184120765754/professionalpenthief-olderthannetfic
> 
> This was a reblog discussion on prokopetz famous post: "It just kills me when writers create franchises where like 95% of the speaking roles are male, then get morally offended that all of the popular ships are gay. It’s like, what did they expect?"
> 
> I actually posted my tl;dr reply to Dreamwidth:

I'm typing up a tl;dr response on tumblr, so I'm going to post it here too for when Tumblr inevitably eats everything.  
  
The [comment](http://professionalpenthief.tumblr.com/post/184110445893/olderthannetfic-destinationtoast-lierdumoa) on that post about how 95% of speaking roles are male and thus slash is inevitable. It reads:

> "wouldn’t it be fair to say that hatred of women is still a factor - but on the creators part for giving us such little representation.
> 
> I also wanna see how different races and ethnicities affect the ships cause there’s is definitely a tendency to ship m/m if both the men are white. If one of them is a poc, the fandom tends to believe the ‘oh they are just friends’ narrative. But i would like to seem some real statistics about that"

Misogyny in the original source material is always a likely issue.  
  
Fandom does ship a lot of white guys together, but we collectively spend a lot of time shaming slash fangirls while not complaining about the sea of white het. The m/m part of the equation isn’t meaningful: all of fandom ships a lot of white characters.  
  
The ticky box stats approach can only tell us so much. Here are some issues that we need to account for in such an analysis:

    * What does it mean to “ship” something?


    * If people ship it in the sense of liking it, consuming fanworks of it, wanting it to be canon, fantasizing about it, giffing it, or something else other than writing fanfic, does that count less than writing fanfic?


    * Is this character considered white/nonwhite everywhere, or do the US and Europe/Latin America/wherever divide categories differently?


    * Is this character an ethnic minority in the place where the media was made, and how is that affecting their representation?


    * How do we know how much fanfic or other attention there “should” be on this fandom? How do we know which source is unpopular because the only m/m option contains a POC and which would always have been unpopular because it’s old/hard to access/has bad production values?


    * What do overall stats on race look like in media? Are we counting only US media? Are we using a US standard about race?


    * What kind of fandom drama has there been? Have the trends in the fandom changed over time?



* * *

  
  
For a concrete example, let’s look at one of my ships: Crockett/Tubbs from Miami Vice. These are the leads in a buddy cop TV series. Crockett is white. Tubbs is black.  
  
The old zine fandom wrote almost no Crockett/Tubbs. Instead, people were writing Crockett/Castillo. Castillo is their boss; he's Cuban and played by Edward James Olmos. (So he's Latino, but fandom was still "ignoring" a black character when it comes to shipping.) The show ended in 1989. A lot of the zine activity was in the early 90s. A group of people got in in the 2000s on mailing lists. A lot of them shipped Crockett/Tubbs, but they didn't produce much fanfic. I got in after all this activity had died down.  
  
I'm also a fan of Starsky & Hutch. S&H is an even older show, but its fandom is still going strong. There's even a slash convention. You heard that right: a convention _just_ for Starsky/Hutch! There's a current podcast. New people still join this fandom. The Professionals is another old buddy cop show about two white guys that also has an ongoing fandom and events.  
  
So whether we compare between Miami Vice pairings or between Miami Vice and other old buddy cop shows, fandom was gravitating away from the black character.  
  
But what does this actually _mean_? Sure, people are racist, but on a nitty-gritty level, what's going on in this example? (Because if we want people to change, we have to understand what they're actually doing now, not just broadly condemn the symptoms.)  
  
Here are the major things I notice:  
  
First, fans get into very old fandoms, like Star Trek or various buddy cop shows, when there is a major body of fanfic left behind for them to consume. The reason for there being lots of Starsky/Hutch and little Crockett/Tubbs in the past may well have been racism, but the reason fans do or don't make these fandoms continue _now_ is simply a factor of whether they were _formerly_ megafandoms.  
  
Second, Miami Vice was only a small/medium-size zine fandom. The zines were produced by a tiny handful of zine publishers. The slash zines were almost all by a _single_ publisher. Their editors' notes contain cartoons of the two of them as Crockett and Castillo. They give off intense, creepy otherkin vibes. At this long remove, I get a sense of _intense_ over-identification of the kind that leads to intense hostility to rival ships. The slash zines from this publisher aren't _just_ Crockett/Castillo: a lot of the stories also contain depictions of Tubbs that I found rather racist on their own, aside from whether he was ~worthy~ of being shipped. I know from people who are still in fandom that there were fic writers who wanted to write Crockett/Tubbs but weren't able to find a publisher.  
  
Meanwhile, because it's a small fandom and I ship a lot of things, I have tried to collect all of the zines. I have a pretty large chunk of the ones listed on Fanlore. The "gen" zines treat Tubbs fine. There are a bunch of stories where he and Crockett have the same vibe as canon. They're practically smarm! There are other stories where Tubbs has a romance with an OFC. He isn't generally sidelined in favor of Castillo.  
  
So is it more accurate to say that Miami Vice fandom didn't appreciate the black lead enough or to say that the slash zines were by a couple of hardcore Crockett/Castillo shippers who cultivated that fandom and scared off other people? Did Miami Vice attract fewer zine publishers overall because it was diverse? Or was it diverse because of the kind of vibe it was going for, and that vibe turned zine publishers off? Or is it simply that S&H is the outlier? There are dozens of white buddy shows from the 80s that also haven't left behind big zine fandoms.  
  
Then there's the actor factor: Philip Michael Thomas (Tubbs) didn't have much of a career after Miami Vice. Don Johnson (Crockett) helmed another buddy show, Nash Bridges, only a few years after Miami Vice ended. That may have made a few people in the mailing list era interested in him as Crockett too. Edward James Olmos may have been rather obscure to nerds aside from his role in Blade Runner back in the 80s and 90s... But then there was BSG! If there's anyone whose back catalog nerds might be checking out now, it's him.  
  


* * *

  
  
I also ship Shawn and Gus from Psych. That pairing has less fic than Shawn/Lassiter. Does that mean nobody liked Shawn/Gus? Does that mean they liked it but didn't write fic for it? If so, was it that they didn't want to write Gus or that Gus actually got lots of development in canon, so fic seemed unnecessary? Are the Shawn/Lassiter shippers to blame, or is there some hypothetical group of buddy shippers who failed to get into Psych at all? Are buddy ships just out of fashion in this sector of fandom?  
  


* * *

  
  
I was into Finn/Poe for a while before I swore off watching Star Wars entirely. Kylux has more fic... But Finn/Poe alone have more fic than most of my fandoms. Hell, Finn/Poe has more fic than any _three_ of my normal fandoms! This is not a small ship, so when people complain about Kylux or Reylo, I have to wonder if it's really about our faves not getting enough love. It seems like this is more about resenting that _anything_ else is popular. As a multishipper, this is not an attitude I can condone, even though I loathe Kylo and any ship involving him.  
  


* * *

  
  
I also love Detroit: Become Human for the android buddy cop parts. It has the same problems as other canons about androids and oppression, including some very offensive allegories. Fandom mostly ships the two white guys from this game. The next most popular ship is another white one cobbled together of fanon. However, if you look at the similar and similarly flawed Almost Human, the ship with the black character is far and away the most popular. The obvious reason is that DBH made the woobie buddy cop android white, while AH made him black.  
  
DBH has much more fic total than AH. What does _that_ show, if anything? DBH has sold over 2 million copies. AH had 4-5 times that many viewers. On the other hand, AH is a standard TV show with a standard audience, while DBH is a nerdy video game and one where some of the actors are gamers who have a lot of contact with their fans. The DBH audience may be naturally heavier in people who like to make fanworks. DBH as a fanfic fandom is also one that a lot of people enter without consuming canon in a standard way (unlike AH). If fans of a particular ship or of fic in general are getting their friends to watch playthroughs on youtube, those new fans are preselected to be more interested in whatever sort of fic exists already.  
  


* * *

  
  
Another big thing to look at is _how_ a character is portrayed in their source material. Fandom usually looks at the script: How many leads of which genders/sexualities/ethnicities are there? How many lines do they have? This is an understandable bias since the people writing this analysis are often fic writers and are, by definition, meta writers.  
  
However, as an editor and filmmaker, I feel that the editing, cinematography, and other aspects of craft are at least as important.  
  
I made a couple of little video essays to try to explain my perspective on these things using The Losers. The first one, _[Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez: Human Exclamation Point](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15534411)_ , is about how a film can emphasize a character with few speaking lines. The second, _[Aisha is the Object; Clay is the Subject](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15917925)_ , is about how a character can have lots of lines, be critical to the plot, and be on screen a lot without inviting us to identify and empathize.  
  
We write fanfics about characters whose heads we can get into. Racist reasons like "I don't identify with black characters" are a factor. Canon-is-racist reasons like the garbage ways black characters are often filmed are another major one. The latter is subtle yet omnipresent. It's given too little blame for causing fandom patterns, while demonized slash fangirls are given too much.  
  


* * *

  
  
I get why you want statistics, but to gather meaningful ones, we'd have to confront some of these factors.


	6. AO3 allows “gross” content for the same reasons it protects things antis like

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: April 11, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/184123038644/concept-infiltrate-anti-circles-and-organize

> Anonymous asked: Concept: infiltrate anti circles and organize boycott of AO3. The discourse always ends with “but I use it anyway bc” some variation of everyone else is there. If we convince them leaving is their idea, maybe they’ll finally migrate in the mistaken belief that AO3 needs their “business.” Then maybe the wank will cool down a little once they’re not “forced” to look at it every day.

[fiction-is-not-reality2](https://fiction-is-not-reality2.tumblr.com/post/184088322616/concept-infiltrate-anti-circles-and-organize):

> If tumblr changing ToS didn’t make us migrate to mirror sites and alternatives (the ones that successfully moved and are probably responsible and been counted in tumblr’s loss of monthly visits - from 521 million page views to 370 - are those currently on humblr.social and artists on twitter + baraag/pawoo/etc), I doubt antis will leave ao3, for the very same reasons. 
> 
> Plus, antis have a self-righteous urge to kill what they don’t like with fire, they can’t live with themselves if they let it be away from them. Where would they perform their activism otherwise? They need to stay close to the problematic content they’re against, or their antism is useless. 

I think there’s also another factor.

AO3 is the most queer-friendly fanfic space I’ve been in. Other spaces are very default straight, not just in terms of what fic is posted but in terms of all of the assumptions about what “normal” fic or “normal” ships or “normal” fans look like.

For all that antis unconsciously regurgitate conservative Christian rhetoric, they’re often not straight or not cis and see themselves as queer activists. Purity rhetoric and homophobia go hand-in-hand. There _is_ no good place for fanfic that satisfies one half of what antis care about while also satisfying the other half.

I mean, yes, I do think they are toxic bullies who should be ashamed of themselves. I do think that their values are inherently in conflict and inherently lead to hypocritical bullshit. But I’m not surprised they find yelling at people one step removed from themselves on Tumblr or AO3 more palatable than dealing with a wall of indifference and derision on Reddit or FF.net.

They are correctly observing that AO3 comes the closest to what they like. It’s not an accident. It’s just that AO3 allows “gross” content for _the exact same reasons_ that it protects other things antis do like.


	7. Open To Interpretation = open to being swept under the rug: A conversation about Good Omens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: June 16-19, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/185631613374/darkness-befriended-replied-to-your-post-16  
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/185664211824/darkness-befriended-vulgarweed  
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/185699790244/sublimepaperfury-darkness-befriended
> 
> This came out of a different meta conversation about educational entertainment and whether you have to choose between pleasure and education.
> 
> It moved on to a discussion of Good Omens, ace representation, older queer people and our cultural experience, yadda yadda. My comments are excerpted below.

[darkness-befriended](https://darkness-befriended.tumblr.com/) replied to your post [“1/6 the other day i rambled in freedom of fanfic’s inbox about how…”](https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/185619832044/16-the-other-day-i-rambled-in-freedom-of-fanfics)

> This was a really helpful post to read. I keep thinking how so much discourse on sex in this site is wrapped up with this idea of pleasure (sex)=sin, and if gay sex=oh boy extra sin (this is simplified but I am seeing it a LOT surrounding Good Omens now). I am still not sure if that’s an US specific thing or generational…

Both, I think.

Tumblr tends to react to anything potentially gay by demanding that it be pure and chaste. As a queer who’s been out since the mid 90s, this is repulsive to me for all of the obvious reasons. It’s blatantly fundie rhetoric. US-style fundie rhetoric.

On the other hand, many of the damaged dumbasses spewing this shit are themselves queer and are either still stuck with or have only recently escaped their religious families. Those people have always existed. In the past, it took them a lot longer to figure out their identities and to know that there was something out there besides religion and hate.

It’s probably a net gain, even with how unintentionally homophobic tumblr tends to be.

* * *

> Sex should be just sex, but like most bodily functions it has become hysterically pathologized in the US when it’s not pivoted on the cis male straight body (just think of the war on breastfeeding for god’s sake!) So it really behooves to pay attention that this kind of discourse is happening in fan spaces perpetrated by so-called young queer people. The internalization of queer-phobic rhetoric by queer people through fan shipping is shocking in this website! Was it always like this, Fandom Elders?!

Was it always like this?

Actually, yeah, pretty much!

There has always been a segment of fandom whose fannish thing was Being Right About Canon, and one flavor of that was always about ships being validated by being endgame. The change is that, nowadays, the concept of queer canon relationships is not _laughable._

Previously, it was all Harmonians calling the rest of us plebes for not reading the secret signals and that kind of thing. “You’re wrong, morally depraved, and X would _never,_ ” was _always_ a thing for het ships, for gen interpretations, and for anybody hating on slash.

Social media has made this stuff a little louder and more inescapable, but I don’t think it has changed its fundamental character.

Much as bad tumblr behavior annoys the shit out of me, one part of it is that we actually feel able to demand what we want now. Fans are coming right out and saying that it’s not _fair_ that their thing, whatever it is, is never in any of the big budget or famous media that they like.

Meanwhile, everywhere, people talk more about representation and diversity now, and tumblr is an echo chamber that makes it seem like fanfic fandom is far larger and more powerful than it actually is.

And yet, big media still follows the ‘one diversity slot’ rule: If there’s an asexual character, there _won’t_ be a gay one. Subconsciously, representation is a zero sum game because that’s the reality of how it works in big budget Hollywood much of the time.

And yeah, we live in an amazing world where all kinds of media are available, but the most violent fan clashes are usually over big media properties with huge reaches and, somewhere up the food chain, hidebound executives decades into their careers. If we were all arguing over Dykes to Watch Out For or Tales of the City or something, the conversation would look very different.

So now we have a Frankenstein’s monster of media activism and Which Guy Will She Choose shipwars. 

* * *

> That said, I do agree that Gaiman has to put out something more definitive: if he wants Aziraphale and Crowley to be viewed in one way, he can’t turn around and say that all interpretations are valid. Especially since the tv show is alternate continuity/canon to the book.

The problem isn’t really Gaiman: it’s everyone else.

I don’t mean by that that fans are the issue. I mean that what Gaiman fundamentally is is a nice guy who means well and has progressive ideas but whose central interests are not the diversity that tumblr is after. The way he acts is the basic decency we should be able to expect from most content creators– _should_ be able to but _can’t._

It can be annoying because he’s not actually a very good standard for super progressive representation and diversity. His oeuvre is littered with stuff like Neverwhere: typical white gary stu narratives with supportive women. I find his versions much more palatable than most people’s, and he has branched out more than many such creators. He’s making _some_ level of effort, which–sad to say–is _so unusual_ that he simultaneously gets plaudits he doesn’t really deserve and is the target for everyone’s built up rage that our media still sucks. He doesn’t deserve that either.

There aren’t many creators who have serious clout who also specialize in… well… literally anything other than white gary stu narratives, at least not in the media and genres tumblr likes. There aren’t many creators who bother to interact with tumblr type fandom without being gigantic assholes. And if there’s someone who has a chance of getting there who is not a white man, social media turns on them ten times as fast. So he seems very special and people get invested, but really, the problem is all of the _other_ creators who aren’t stepping up to the plate.

–

I don’t think he _does_ want Aziraphale and Crowley to be viewed in any one particular way, and that’s fine. The problem is that in the media landscape we inhabit, anything less blatant than “Harold, they’re lesbians!” gets people assuming that characters are the default–meaning straight.

Angels are sexless? Straight. They’re in love, but they might not be fucking or even have any equipment to fuck with? Straight. It’s a beautiful relationship, no matter how you interpret it? STRAIGHT.

Sure, that’s not how most of tumblr sees things, but go stop any rando on the street and ask them how they interpreted any of tumblr’s faves. They won’t be debating whether they’re asexual or gay or both or some other kind of queer identity: they’ll say that in the absence of flaming letters as high as the Hollywood sign with a specific orientation and possibly a definition underneath, everyone is STRAIGHT STRAIGHT STRAIGHT. Why would you even ask???

The sheer force of the hearteyes in Good Omens made the mainstream audience notice more than usual, so you’ll get a few articles saying it was pretty gay. You won’t get many that say it could be asexual representation. No, you’ll get a million more “Protect male friendship!” and “Isn’t it nice to see men who love each other, but not _like that_ , for once!” As though the _entire history_ of Western art weren’t about venerating the sacred bond of male friendship!

Writers like Gaiman are always going to say their creations are open to interpretation because that’s the most inclusive and fan-friendly stance from their perspective.

The kind of fans who are on tumblr are always going to want explicit confirmation of their preferred headcanon because “open to interpretation” in a bigoted society means _open to being swept under the rug_.


	8. We will never be more than a tolerated afterthought until we are in the driver’s seat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: June 19, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/185717564299/darkness-befriended-olderthannetfic
> 
> This was the conclusion of the conversation from the last chapter.

> So question for you and everyone on this thread (if you don’t mind): how do we represent queerness in media in a way that goes beyond “protect male friendship!” (boy am I tired of that), but also doesn’t produce this sincerely horrible queer-on-queer infighting? Because right now with Good Omens, we don’t have het shippers vs. queer shippers, we have gay-identified people being called acephobic if they want to see physical tenderness between same-sex characters, and ace people feeling unseen by a relationship people can dismiss as straight male friendship. What’s the way out, you think? I keep trying to find a way to make queerness visible that is not predicated only on sexual content, or awkward “I am ace!”, “we are boyfriends!” speeches and am coming out blank. 
> 
> Ideas? Recs?

It’s simple. It’s just hard.

Get 20 authors/show creators with a Gaiman-ish sensibility and his level of clout who are themselves openly queer.

Every creative has things they naturally gravitate to. The problem with queer representation is that it’s mostly coming from well-meaning people who are trying to give us a seat at the table, not people who are deeply personally invested in making the narrative _about_ queerness _in preference_ to other things.

**We will never be more than a _tolerated afterthought_ until we are in the driver’s seat.**

We will always fight with one another when there is only _one_ slice of pie for all of us and a whole entire pie for the straight people. A whole bakery of pies. A universe of pies. How do we represent asexuality well? I have no clue, but a thousand pieces of ace representation made by ace creators will probably answer that.

So for actual things people can do…

**1.** Go into media.

If TV is the medium you care about. _Get a job in TV._ Don’t write books. Don’t write fanfic. Or at least, don’t pretend that’s going to do shit.

**2.** Learn how Hollywood actually works so we can direct our complaints where they belong: at the people who actually make the decisions we hate. ClexaCon apparently invites that guy who wrote _that_ episode. His career took a big hit for a network decision. Understanding the economics and creative process of the media we like helps us either make it ourselves or complain to the people with the actual power.

**2a.** Understand how Hollywood writes male friendship. Recognize when a ship is clearly not going to be canon. Instead of giving them years of your life and lots of your money and then yelling “queerbaiting” when you feel betrayed, ditch them early. Vote with your feet and your wallet. _This is the only vote Hollywood understands._

**3.** Go cold turkey on media that pains you.

If TV has nothing for you, _stop watching TV_. Buy books. Back a webcomic patreon. Talk about these canons on your social media and in person. Spend money and time and energy on a medium where you _can_ find what you want.

Don’t pirate shows because that’s sticking it to the man: _Paying attention_ to it is giving it cultural relevance and making its creators think they’ve got you on the hook. It’s nearly as bad as paying money for it, and you are taking time away from other media you could support instead.

**4.** Recognize that cis men, regardless of orientation, are raised to write relationships in a very different way from how AFAB-heavy spaces like Tumblr/AO3 fanfic fandom do. If we want media that _we_ relate to, even supporting the few powerful cis gay men in Hollywood will not do much.

If you want to exclude “fujoshi” from your media, you are _asking_ to fail. The only way we have the economic clout to get what we want is if we recognize that a broad spectrum of AFAB people have semi-compatible tastes and for trans men and nonbinary people and cis women and everybody else in this part of fandom to band together behind the things we enjoy. Cis gay men do not have our backs. Not in general.

We need to knock off the “not like the other girls” from women accusing other women of being fetishizing fujoshi. (Protip: if you’re female and like m/m in any context, you’re a fujoshi. Full stop. That’s what the word means.) We need to knock off using “Saying girls like [slash, BL, fanfic, shit tumblr likes] triggers my dysphoria” as an excuse. It may _well_ trigger many trans men’s dysphoria to be told that their favorite hobby is a chick hobby. I’m not saying it’s not _true_ : I’m saying it’s not an _excuse_. The type of tumblr fandom that cares about queer relationships is as gendered as a quilting bee or–more aptly–the romance novel industry.

This is about _economics_ and _audience size_. The media we like are not made by government grants based on them being important and educational. They are multi-million dollar vehicles for _profit_. We must compete _economically_ , not just morally.

We need the population numbers that cis women have, including straight cis women, to have any hope of getting big budget media of the types we like. Getting angry that “fujoshi” are among the population that likes tumblr’s obsession du jour is _exactly_ like Supernatural getting butthurt that their audience is women rather than straight, cis men.

Don’t be like Supernatural.

**5.** Have a zero-tolerance policy on shipwars disguised as progressive activism in your fandom spaces. No more Rebecca Sugar hate. No more shrieking about Klance vs. “abusive” ships at the Voltron voice actors. No more tolerating this behavior in our friends and members of our coms/discords/etc.

When you mod a kink meme or a discord and someone scares you into having anti-lite policies, you are telling everyone that you agree with those values. I have seen way too many fans do this because they are scared of backlash or because they think it would be mean or wanky to stand up or because they want rules that “most people are okay with”.

_Someone will always be offended._

When you cave to “most” and “most” means censoring things, you’ve just told everyone where your values lie. If your space is specifically for kids, great! Ban all adult talk! But if your space is “general”, think hard about what that means.

In my world, sanitized sandboxes for kiddos are not the default adult social space. In my world–a homophobic world–too much “purity” _always_ ends up as a cover for homophobia.

AO3 has sent a powerful message about what “we” stand for and who “we” are. If we want media that does the same thing, we need to stand up for our actual values, and we need to understand the implications of those values.

I’m sure there are things to criticize about Stephen Universe or any of fandom’s other hobby horses, but we have bogged ourselves down in internecine warfare in an era when Rabid Puppies or Gamergate or the entire fucking right wing in the US have banded together behind common causes.

This is how activism fucking works!

You will always end up on the same side as some people you don’t like or have to tolerate some things you find squicky so that you can achieve your mutual goals. Tumblr is _not_ mostly 13-year-olds at this point. It’s mostly 20-somethings. And yet we persist in tolerating holier than thou, divisive circular firing squad bullshit. That kind of black and white PURITY garbage _is_ the mindset of a 13-year-old.

So, basically:

  * Spend money and time more carefully.
  * Creators, canons, representation: MORE is a better strategy than PERFECT.
  * Stop shooting yourself in the foot.



(And if someone’s curious after this rant about what I do, I work in film but mostly spend money on m/m romance novels these days. I hope to one day get some of them made into films.)


End file.
